Menu

Blog

Archive for the ‘nuclear energy’ category: Page 50

Oct 9, 2021

Solar Panels Plus Farming? Agrivoltaics Explained

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, solar power, sustainability

Could combining solar panels plus farming be a viable solution to the growing demand for food production and energy demand? Let’s take a closer look at electrifying our crops (not literally electrifying crops) … well, adding solar to our farm land as well as some of the side benefits and challenges it creates.

Continue reading “Solar Panels Plus Farming? Agrivoltaics Explained” »

Oct 8, 2021

Researchers create ‘self-aware’ algorithm to ward off hacking attempts

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cybercrime/malcode, information science, nuclear energy, robotics/AI

It sounds like a scene from a spy thriller. An attacker gets through the IT defenses of a nuclear power plant and feeds it fake, realistic data, tricking its computer systems and personnel into thinking operations are normal. The attacker then disrupts the function of key plant machinery, causing it to misperform or break down. By the time system operators realize they’ve been duped, it’s too late, with catastrophic results.

The scenario isn’t fictional; it happened in 2,010 when the Stuxnet virus was used to damage nuclear centrifuges in Iran. And as ransomware and other cyberattacks around the world increase, system operators worry more about these sophisticated “false data injection” strikes. In the wrong hands, the computer models and data analytics—based on artificial intelligence—that ensure smooth operation of today’s electric grids, manufacturing facilities, and power plants could be turned against themselves.

Purdue University’s Hany Abdel-Khalik has come up with a powerful response: To make the computer models that run these cyberphysical systems both self-aware and self-healing. Using the background noise within these systems’ data streams, Abdel-Khalik and his students embed invisible, ever-changing, one-time-use signals that turn passive components into active watchers. Even if an is armed with a perfect duplicate of a system’s model, any attempt to introduce falsified data will be immediately detected and rejected by the system itself, requiring no human response.

Oct 5, 2021

New nuclear fusion reactor design may be a breakthrough

Posted by in categories: materials, nuclear energy

“The twisted coils are the most expensive and complicated part of the stellarator and have to be manufactured to very great precision in a very complicated form,” physicist Per Helander, head of the Stellarator Theory Division at Max Planck and lead author of the new paper, told Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory News.

The new design offers a simpler approach by instead using permanent magnets, whose magnetic field is generated by the internal structure of the material itself. As described in an article published by Nature, Zarnstorff realized that neodymium–boron permanent magnets—which behave like refrigerator magnets, only stronger—had become powerful enough to potentially help control the plasma in stellarators.

Oct 5, 2021

Eric G Meyer — Founder & Director — Generation Atomic — Advanced Nuclear Power Advocacy For Humanity

Posted by in categories: climatology, media & arts, nuclear energy, policy

Advanced Nuclear Power Advocacy For Humanity — Eric G. Meyer, Founder & Director, Generation Atomic


Eric G. Meyer is the Founder and Director of Generation Atomic (https://generationatomic.org/), a nuclear advocacy non-profit which he founded after hearing about the promise of advanced nuclear reactors, and he decided to devote his life to saving and expanding the use of atomic energy.

Continue reading “Eric G Meyer — Founder & Director — Generation Atomic — Advanced Nuclear Power Advocacy For Humanity” »

Oct 4, 2021

A Company Is Producing Thousands of Cheap, Floating Nuclear Reactors

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, solar power, sustainability

While wind turbine and solar power platforms are beginning to take to the sea, another, more established form of power might also avoid hiking real estate costs.

A Copenhagen-based startup just raised funding to the sum of eight figures in Euros to begin construction of a new kind of cheap, flexible, portable, and unyieldingly safe nuclear reactor, according to a press release shared by the company, Seaborg Technologies.

Continue reading “A Company Is Producing Thousands of Cheap, Floating Nuclear Reactors” »

Oct 3, 2021

How close is nuclear fusion power?

Posted by in category: nuclear energy

Claim your SPECIAL OFFER for MagellanTV here: https://try.magellantv.com/sabinehossenfelder. Start your free trial TODAY so you can watch The Story of Energy about how super-important energy is to human civilization, and the rest of MagellanTV’s science collection: https://www.magellantv.com/series/order-and-disorder-the-for…-energy-4k.

How close is nuclear fusion to break-even? If you trust the headlines we’re getting close and the international project ITER is going to be the first to produce energy from fusion power. But not so fast. Scientists have, accidentally or deliberately, come to use a very misleading quantity to measure their progress. Unfortunately we’re much farther away from generating fusion power than the headlines suggest.

Continue reading “How close is nuclear fusion power?” »

Sep 30, 2021

Gates’ Startup Replaces Coal Plant With New Kind of Nuclear Reactor

Posted by in categories: climatology, nuclear energy

Editor’s note, 6/28/21, 3:35 PM: The article was updated to clarify that Natrium features a sodium‐cooled fast reactor and not a type of molten salt reactor, as previously reported.

A nuclear power startup founded by Bill Gates has announced plans to build a new kind of nuclear reactor at a retiring coal plant in Wyoming.

This reactor will be the first real-world demonstration of the startup’s technology, which could help power the world — without warming the climate.

Sep 23, 2021

Harnessing the Power of the Sun on Earth: Major Advance in Stellarator Performance for Fusion Energy

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, physics

Stellarators, twisty magnetic devices that aim to harness on Earth the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars, have long played second fiddle to more widely used doughnut-shaped facilities known as tokamaks. The complex twisted stellarator magnets have been difficult to design and have previously allowed greater leakage of the superhigh heat from fusion reactions.

Now scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), working in collaboration with researchers that include the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is a collaborative national laboratory for plasma physics and nuclear fusion science. Its primary mission is research into and development of fusion as an energy source for the world.

Sep 22, 2021

Nuclear waste interaction in the environment may be more complicated than once thought

Posted by in categories: chemistry, nuclear energy

Past and present nuclear activities (energy, research, weapon tests) have increased the urgency to understand the behavior of radioactive materials in the environment. Nuclear wastes containing actinides (e.g. plutonium, americium, curium, neptunium…) are particularly problematic as they remain radioactive and toxic for thousands of years.


Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and collaborators proposed a new mechanism by which nuclear waste could spread in the environment.

The new findings, that involve researchers at Penn State and Harvard Medical School, have implications for nuclear waste management and environmental chemistry. The research is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Continue reading “Nuclear waste interaction in the environment may be more complicated than once thought” »

Sep 21, 2021

Rolls-Royce Is Developing a Nuclear Reactor for Mining the Moon and Mars

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, nuclear energy, space travel

The firm is looking into how a micro-nuclear reactor could be used to propel rockets while in space at huge speeds and how that technology could then be redeployed to provide energy for drilling, processing, and storage for “Moon mining” and possibly “Mars mining.”

Dave Gordon, head of the company’s defense division, said this work is possible thanks to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and their respective space companies.

He added that’s Rolls-Royce is the only company on the planet that does mechanical, electrical, and nuclear and a full end-to-end lifecycle of nuclear capability. He also noted that the firm could use its experience in developing nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Navy for 60 years to apply what it learned to spacecraft since submarines and spacecraft are somewhat similar.

Page 50 of 117First4748495051525354Last